NEW YORK: A top aide to former secretary of state Colin Powell has again launched a stinging attack on US Vice President Dick Cheney over abuse of prisoners by US troops.
In an interview with BBC on Tuesday Col Lawrence Wilkerson accused Mr Cheney of ignoring a decision by President Bush on the treatment of prisoners in the war on terror.
When asked if Mr Cheney could be accused of war crimes, he said: “It’s an interesting question. Certainly it is a domestic crime to advocate terror,” he added.
“And I would suspect, for whatever it’s worth, it’s an international crime as well.”
Col Wilkerson has in the past accused the vice president of responsibility for the conditions which led to the abuse of prisoners. But this time he has gone much further, appearing to suggest Mr Cheney should face war crimes charges, noted one analyst in Washington.
President Bush agreed a compromise, that ‘Geneva would in fact govern all but Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda look-alike detainees’.
“What I’m saying is that, under the vice president’s protection, the secretary of defence [Donald Rumsfeld] moved out to do what they wanted in the first place, even though the president had made a decision that was clearly a compromise,” Col Wilkerson said.
